Description
This book also begins with that wondrous first Information Technology and then moves on to tales about the wonders of the written word—great stories, many of them likely new to most readers. In them, you‘ll find all the backgrounds, foregrounds, premises, conclusions, and surprises that make up the best and most valuable books.

Excerpt
In the Bible, God‘s first gift to man isn‘t a lesson about how to make a fire or fashion a needle, a knife, or a spear. He first blesses him with language. Even before He takes Adam‘s rib to make Eve, He tells Adam to name every living creature. Adam immediately understands God‘s words and enunciates his own.

Table of Contents
1. Did Water Monkeys Swim before We Spoke?-From whence cometh language, the InfoTech that lets us dominate our planet? We listen. We easily hallucinate word boundaries. Spaces, such as you see in writing, are absent from speech. Yet somehow we find it easy to make sense of speech. -- 2. The Gift of Memory-For millennia, mnemonics reigned over commerce, news, entertainment, and the perpetuation and refinement of crafts. -- 3. From Whence Cometh Indo-European Tongues?-Did a freshwater lake community flee a saltwater surge that filled the Black Sea and scatter its language west toward the Atlantic, southeast toward India, and northeast toward the Pacific? -- 4. Scripting Symbols of Shape-Scripting symbolic images lets man communicate over space and time. Balance of power shifts from tribal chiefs to city-state warrior-kings and priests. -- 5. Symbols of Sound Demand Analysis-The alphabet makes the pen mightier than the sword, generating the powers of knowledge needed to create and govern empires. -- 6. China‘s InfoTech Siblings-For centuries, the Chinese keep to themselves ?the wasps’ secret? and then develop printing blocks—the precursor to Gutenberg’s wondrous invention. Paper and print nourish China’s awakening, which dazzles Marco Polo. -- 7. Islam‘s Great Gifts to the West-One precept of the Koran states that the human world’s quest for knowledge leads to further knowing of Allah. Islam saves classic wisdom and passes China’s wasp secret to the West. -- 8. Charlemagne and Medieval Europe-The illiterate warrior-king brings the scholarly monk Alcuin and his literary arts and sciences school system to France to create the Carolingian renaissance. By changing the structure of words and sentences, the monk from York makes writing forever easier to read. -- 9. Largest Land Empire Ever-Illiterate tribes of nomad herder-hunters unite under Genghis Khan and then take less than a century to create the largest contiguous empire in world history. -- 10. Mongols Open the Way They open the gate blocking direct human contact between Europe and China just in time to let InfoTech wonders from the East nourish the Renaissance. -- 11. The Missing Keys to Science Chest Ancient Greece’s fear of the void blocked the advance of science for millennia, but Hindus in India and the Arabs unveil the numerical tools needed for modern science to emerge in the West. -- 12. Invaders from the North Scandinavian tongues mingle with those of their Viking cousins, but the French language may exert even greater impact on the evolution of English. The Treasure of Our Tongue nourishes the rise of democracies. -- 13. He Unchained Books-The German goldsmith’s invention frees access to library books and breaks the chains of ignorance that held most of mankind in bondage for millennia. -- 14. Printers as Agents of Change-After the fall of Rome, Western culture focuses for centuries on guarding rather than expanding accumulated knowledge, but the shift from script to print amplifies, reinforces, and disseminates the power of knowledge. -- 15. Capitalists‘ Link to Ink-Printers become ?carriers of a spirit of capitalism? simply because they were capitalists themselves. -- 16. Shaping the English Language-William Caxton’s print shop helps standardize The Treasure of Our Tongue, and Henry VIII’s first act as ?pope? orders and then funds the first printed English Bible. -- 17. Ottmar Mergenthaler Does It Again-Inventors strived from the early 1800s to mechanize Gutenberg’s process—unsuccessfully until Mergenthaler built his Linotype. But Ottmar’s name fell through history’s cracks. -- 18. ?The Eighth Wonder of the World?-Although as late as 1980, Linotypes still set 80 percent of the world’s text, most of those once-wondrous machines were junked before 2000. -- 19. Free Self-Learning Laboratories.-Public libraries give the ordinary citizen access to reading material previously available only to the most elite. Advances in literacy and self-education lead to a ?Scientific Revolution.? -- 20. Linotype‘s Digital Demise-Smoke and the acrid smell of hot lead in the back shop blend with the clickety-clack of a gang of wondrous Linotypes in full cry. Then suddenly, they’re gone. -- 21. The Seeds of Cyberspace-?As long as scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, new scientific knowledge will flow to those who can apply it to practical problems.? -- 22. Knowledge-Sharing InfoTech—Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow-?It is a matter of most importance that our government protect the right of every citizen to have access to knowledge without regard to an individual’s ability to pay.? -- Time Line of Information Technology Revolutions -- Epilogue -- Acknowledgments -- About the Author -- About Michael Hart -- Bibliography -- Index --